Surprise: Brooklyn Is the Least Affordable Housing Market In the Country

Not that you need more good news about this city of ours today, or more proof that, for most people living here, life is just one long struggle, but, well, tough, because we just read this: Brooklyn is officially the least affordable housing market in the country. Surprise!

Via Bloomberg News, we learned that Brooklyn has edged out San Francisco and Manhattan as being the most unaffordable places to live in the nation. A California-based company, RealTrac, looked at data dating back to 2000 to determine this maybe not shocking, but still sobering statistic: In Brooklyn “a resident would need to devote 98 percent of the median income to afford the payment on a median-priced home of $615,000.” In short, most Brooklyn residents incomes come nowhere near to matching the local housing costs, thus making it unlikely that if you live in Brooklyn you can actually afford to be doing so.

One of the problems facing Brooklyn is the fact that many buildings and homes are being snapped up by foreign investors, thus driving up the prices. Brooklyn is also notable for being part of the “12 percent of the counties studied [which] now have a higher median home price than the peak of the 2005-2008 property bubble.” Oh, Brooklyn! You’re just so impervious to the whims of the real estate market, aren’t you? Never change! Please change! The article further drives home just how fucked this real estate market is when it mentions that it’s not just wannabe buyers who are screwed, but also renters: “The median rent in Brooklyn was $2,858 in October, up almost 6 percent from a year earlier.”

No wonder politicians and police officers are always urging the public to be nonviolent and respect other people’s property—it’s worth far more than, say, most people’s lives.